August 30, 2009

Cheney Versus The Crows

Did you know that crows recognize human faces? To prove this, [naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt] writes, a researcher at the University of Washington conducted an experiment.

Volunteers who had captured and banded crows (something crows resent) while wearing caveman masks were cawed at and dive-bombed whenever they re-entered crow precincts. When the same volunteers walked through the crow zone with their faces hidden by Dick Cheney masks, "the crows left them entirely alone."

That's from Liesl Schillinger's New York Times review of Crow Planet, which it's safe to say looks like the definitive book on crow behavior, and even has this great description of crow funerals: "a 'stillness' settles around a deceased bird as other crows 'cluster about the crow in perfect silence.' "